Bottom three now as I predicted - the most boring but most likely outcome as things stand. With that said, Leeds hiring Allardyce makes things interesting, and Leicester are poor enough that they could certainly drop if Allardyce or Cooper manage to get some points from their final few games.

Definitely, they've got the infrastructure, owners willing to back the manager and a manager who really knows what he's doing. If JDT left then McKenna would be an ideal replacement - although truthfully there wouldn't be much point in him trading Ipswich for us.

Genuinely never been this angry after a win. Think I'm going to disconnect from Rovers for a while, as it's not healthy to feel like this.

Give him a pre season to get himself back to proper fitness, he'll be fine. Literally the only player we have with any real footballing intelligence. Wouldn't keep him on his current deal, but if there's a more sensible deal to be made it's an easy decision.

We didn't though, because it's in a match where the result didn't matter, and I'm sure the players knew that. Showing bottle would have been doing it when it matters, something this team are incapable of.

Just need another 8 or 9 to fuck off with them. Although for the record Dacky is one I'd keep.

Nice to see we can still compete when the pressure disappears. Same old story from the same old players.

We're actually going to get Sunderland into the playoffs. I've said it before, but what a fucking cursed season.

A lot of current players who need to be shown the door for us to really progress. Too many without any real guts or heart. Sadly we don't seem have the resources for such a clear out.

Tbf you could argue the same as most games before January too. We just managed to win more of those.

My goodness we would have got utterly embarrassed had we made the playoffs. Merciful for all involved that we've fallen short.

Maybe JDT doesn't want Sunderland to get the last playoff spot either.

It's obvious a lot of people grossly overestimated how good the teams in this division were at the start of the season. Being wrong about expectations because of overestimation isn't a good reason to be thankful we're on the verge of throwing away a playoff spot in an absolutely pathetic manner for the second season running.

Who would have imagined us in this position when we were 4th and just beat Sheff Utd 1-0 on March 4th 🤨

Finding a striker as sole criteria might be as much as we can expect from the current recruitment team, let alone a good one.

Just spent some time trying out Heypi, a conversational AI chatbot. Honestly, it was scarily impressive. Not perfect but in terms of holding a realistic conversation, far superior to ChatGPT. To make a nerdy Star Trek reference, ChatGPT is like talking to Data, whereas Heypi is like talking to Data with the emotion chip installed. Probably the most interesting thing was that it knew when I was making ridiculous comments and reacted accordingly, at one point saying "🤣 you're just taking the piss now", which was unexpected (and correct, as I was). It's designed to be conversational so doesn't have the same usefulness as far as doing things like generating code or writing summaries, but for what it's designed for it seemed to work very well. I remember downloading Billy back in the early 2000s (http://www.leedberg.com/glsoft/billyproject.shtml) and it was mainly just amusing, not something to be taken seriously. Even more recent chatbots like Replika were OK, but not hugely advanced. Heypi feels like a massive step forward. I threw some pretty obscure topics at it, and it was able to converse about all of them with solid knowledge and in a fairly natural way.

It's a good point, but I suppose the main difference between the internet and AI is that, as far as the internet is concerned, it was more like having a massive, almost unlimited library at your disposal. The rules of the game, insofar as essays are concerned, didn't change. Plagarism was still not allowed (unless specified, I had a couple of essays where it was okay to copy and paste certain elements) and whilst it's obviously harder to detect when there's a hugely expansive library of content suddenly available - not all of which would be academically published - it was still somewhat easy to see when a student blatantly copied something that wasn't their own work. The only other major issue really was the rise of citing dubious sources like Wikipedia. That wasn't allowed when I was at uni in the mid-to-late 2000s, again unless specifically confirmed as being okay, and I'm guessing it's still the case today. AI, on the other hand, literally writes the essays for students. Even if students went to the internet and copied and pasted a bunch of stuff, there was still some level of research involved. With AI, not so. Just tell it the basics of what you need and it'll deliver it. Reword as you see fit and there you go, essay written - but without the student having any real knowledge of what they've submitted. In truth this ultimately hurts the student more than anything else, as it would with total plagarism from the internet, but whilst some AI generated work will be easy to spot, a lot won't if the student is clever enough with reworking to suit his or her writing style and general level of knowledge. I certainly wouldn't want to be in an academic position trying to work this out. If traditional plagarism is caught a distinct passage or paragraph can normally be highlighted, and if the person grading the essay is able to find the specific piece copied from then it's basically an open-and-shut case. Going to be a lot harder when accusing a student of submitting AI generated work, as that work will likely be pulled from a high amount of sources and given an original slant depending on the prompt entered. If the student says "nope, I wrote that"... not sure what anyone can do about that. You're right that ultimately academia is going to have to adapt, though. Essays may simply become a thing of the past, as they become too easy to generate from AI and therefore worthless. You wonder if the recent swing from exams to practical work might go back in the other direction, with more focus being put on exams instead, as it's far less likely a student is going to be able to get an AI to write them an essay during a closed exam, or answer questions. If the student doesn't have the knowledge, they simply won't be able to do it. We're then back at the point of it being unfair to students who aren't good in these kinds of pressure situations though, and a high level of reliance on exams could see otherwise good students getting poor grades. Probably too early at this point for the education sector to determine any concrete course of actions, but they're going to have to use some foresight and start tailoring the academic process to better reflect the way AI is going to fundementally change how society works. It's not a question of 'if' anymore, it's already here and it's only going to accelerate from here.

Yep, it's that often quoted 'striker's instinct' that separates the true goalscorers from other attackers. People don't talk too much about anticipation and positioning but you only have to watch the likes of Shearer, Cole, Van Nistelrooy, etc to see how valuable it is. Of course Shearer was also blessed with pace, strength, heading skills and basically every other attribute a striker would want, which is why he was one of the absolute best.

I think he was just addicted to lying tbh. Probably became increasingly emboldened as the local press never pulled him up on his bullshit and the national press (Henry Winter and a couple of others excepted) were more interested in doggedly painting Rovers fans as ungrateful thugs than focusing on Kean's nonsense.

When you watch Shearer's goals you notice how incredible his positioning was. A fair few of his goals were tap-ins or rebounds, but he scored them because he'd anticipated where the ball was going to be if the original shot failed and was always on hand to convert a rebound. It's a trait the likes of Gally and BBD simply don't possess, and probably never will. Dack is the closest we have in the current squad who has that ability to know where the ball is likely to bounce.

One of the big issues developing is students at various levels of education using ChatGTP and other AI variants to write their essays. There are tools which supposedly detect if a piece of work is AI generated, but they are far from perfect. You get the feeling it's going to become a pretty huge issue, and is going to be a real headache for educators.

It's an interesting question to ponder - is Big Sam's ability to get average to below-average players to overachieve and avoid relegation less laudable than Pep and Klopp's ability to lead elite players to winning trophies? We'll never know how Allardyce would have fared at a bigger club, and we'll never know how Pep or Klopp would fare trying to get a Leeds or a Sunderland out of danger.

Loves a bit of a wind up does Big Sam.

Allardyce will target the home games as wins, using whatever means necessary to grind out the three points, and any away points will be a bonus. Will be interesting to see if he can implement his methods successfully in such a short amount of time. He had longer at WBA and didn't get there, so his aura of invincibility has faded a little.

Completely agree. That's why all of our incoming transfers can't be based solely on the criteria of resale value and development. You need some hard-nosed, experienced grafters in there as well. We have literally zero of this in midfield, and defensively we have a relatively young and inexperienced backline. I've said it before, but we desperately need a player like Todd or Nelsen who has the know-how to manage the game on the pitch whilst refusing to allow heads or standards to drop. Players who genuinely seethe at the thought of losing, who can't stand themselves or their team mates putting in anything less than 100%. Players who may rock the boat on occasion, but always demand more from themselves and those around them, including the manager. I can't think of a single player in our team right now who fills that role. They'll have a go at each other occasionally on the pitch, but that isn't the same thing. It's an attitude that can't be coached, it's either in you or it isn't. It doesn't need to be in every player, but it needs to be in a couple of them at least.